Evening: Award of the 2023 Literary Prize
Every year for the past 23 years, a jury of students from the school has awarded a first French-language novel published the previous year as part of the ENS Paris-Saclay Literary Prize.
This year, they read and judged 10 books in competition before choosing Les têtes baissées (Robert Laffont) written by François-Xavier Ménage.
This social novel revolves around a food factory, specialised in pork, which supports a small Breton village where "even the pavements seem to be at the end of their lives.
But this company is dying, restructuring and redundancies are threatening the lives of employees whose daily professional life is already very difficult and painful, not to mention the injuries at work which are not so rare.
A heavy subject and tone, but with a realism and dynamism that won over the jury.
A book that the jury invites you to discover, with its powerful style, but not without warning you if you are very sensitive to the cause of animal welfare.